Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America

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So today Billboard changed their policy to allow digital music sales to count on previously airplay-driven genre charts. The problem with this is that there is no way of separating by demographics like there is for radio. The radio listener chooses the station that best fits their tastes, whereas anyone might buy from Itunes. Further compounding the problem is that that isn't even true -- economically privileged listeners, who are more likely to be white, are much more likely to purchase digital music.

The introduction of Itunes data to the Billboard Hot 100 in 2005 has had the effect of slowly but surely pushing music favored by black audiences off the pop charts and top 40 (and even rhythmic) radio, to the point where there are now very few songs that cross over from urban radio to other formats. Over the past year or so, there have been only a few songs popular on the r&b charts that cross over into the top 40 at any given time, usually below the top 10 (even this year's huge rap hits "The Motto" and "Mercy" got stuck in the teens on the big chart), while most of urban radio's big songs get stuck in the 30-100 range of the Hot 100. This has also led to the trend of black music stars like Nicki Minaj and Usher creating entirely different singles for different radio formats, with pop songs for white radio and r&b or rap songs for black radio.

Billboard's new changes potentially strike an even bigger blow to black audiences being able to determine their own hits. On this week's r&b chart, with the changes enacted, Rihanna's decidedly pop (and, it should be noted, terrible) "Diamonds" jumps from #61 to #1, pushing Miguel's decidedly r&b (and brilliant) "Adorn" out of the top spot. Urban radio stations may have lost one of their last impetuses left not to play pop music with white-leaning audiences.

There's even more to this but I don't have time to explain every last factor at work right this second. Here's what's been said on the rolling r&b thread:

um... some dude... wtf is going on with the R&B chart? why is Rihanna's "Diamonds" suddenly #1?

basically the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart has tradtionally been mostly airplay + physical single sales, so if a nominal R&B song (by, say, Rihanna) did well on iTunes and pop radio but not actual R&B stations, it wouldn't make much of an impact on the R&B chart. but as of this week, iTunes is a factor on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop like it has been on the Hot 100 for years, so now suddenly "Diamonds" is #1, and there's now a R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart which is basically what the main chart used to be, and on that "Adorn" is #1 and "Diamonds is #61.

this is massively fuck up whatever confidence R&B stations and labels had left to not cater to pop crossover imo. horrible move by Billboard.

oh wow, part of my gripe about this was going to be that the Country charts didn't get the same treatment but they did -- Taylor Swift leaps from #21 to #1 on the revamped download-heavy Country chart. fucking Billboard, putting nails in the coffin of terrestrial radio formats' ability to make hits.

Wonder if (the very good, all-R&B) Two Eleven has a shot at the Top Ten of the Billboard 200. "Put It Down": 70-76-72 last three weeks on Hot 100 and 16-5-3 last three weeks on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop. Doesn't really bode well.

i read both of those at the time - they were great and i think i may have linked one in my independent r&b piece - but what is it about itunes that means it's an inefficient driver of r&b? it's so geared towards casual/spontaneous consumption that it inherently privileges pop?

those might be factors but the more simple truth is just that demographically speaking the songs and artists that get chart boosts from iTunes sales, particularly single sales, strongly skew pop and not urban

This is really interesting, Rev. We've never really had high-stakes multiple charts and the US system has always seemed incredibly complicated to me, but then we're a million times smaller so it's a different proposition, I guess.

well, they used to be lists of what music is actually being played and requested on the radio, too. but however they combine these different statistics always seems to heavily favor sales over overplay. (xpost)

All I'll add to the exhaustive data you offer is a hobby-horse I've been riding for a couple of years now: the need for Billboard to finally add digital-sales data to the R&B/Hip-Hop chart.

They've been resisting for years, on the (implied, not overtly stated) premise that it would ruin the character of a chart that has a long history with black-owned and oriented retailers. But with that segment (along with all brick-and-mortar music retail) at death's door anyway, the sales portion of Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs has been near-nonexistent for years, making it essentially a radio chart a la the deadly, predigital Hot 100 of 2000–05.

That's led to a problem where there's no longer a radio programmer-to-consumer-back-to-programmer feedback loop that makes for great charts. I'm sure there's a one-way influence from radio to the teen urban-music buyer who then downloads a Trey Songz MP3. But with that sale not reflected on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, the loop ends there; programmers aren't given clear enough signals of how to reflect their most avid audience members' tastes (especially young audience).

In my ideal fantasy world, you'd be able to segment iTunes/AmazonMP3 song sales to pockets of the country that have large black populations or high urban-radio listenership, but that's probably impossible, or at least fraught. But at the very least, I think it'd be trivial for Billboard to set up a rule whereby a song eligible for R&B/Hip-Hop Songs would have to hit some kind of urban-radio threshold before their iTunes sales would count toward the chart.

the rock charts are much less affected by this than R&B or country -- for instance this week fun.'s "Some Nights" went back to #1 after falling to #8, because it had started to run its course on radio but is still selling strong on iTunes.

it's funny, you might've thought before this all happened that iTunes impacting singles charts might mean that new artists and grassroots successes that have been shut out by the radio industry might get a better shot at breaking through. instead, it feels like any song by the biggest stars is stomping out songs people love by less famous artists via the power of name recognition and fanatical fanclub followings.

you mentioned itunes sales in the other thread shipz - i'm guessing those are discounted albums rather than individual tracks?

Not discounted albums, people buy lots of album tracks individually from popular albums all the time. A hit album is almost guaranteed to have several album tracks enter the Hot 100 on its week of release because of this.

i'd be interested to know why r&b/rap/country etc might not be as digitally-driven...?

That isn't quite true of country, but white demographics are a lot more likely to have internet in their homes than black/latinos. And even if they do, the white listener is a lot more likely to have spare $$$ to spend on digital music.

there's also the argument that buying your favorite song on iTunes (as opposed to just listening to it on the radio, streaming it on YouTube now and again, or buying the album) is a generational habit, and so things that skew younger benefit from this -- Taylor, Rihanna etc.

i mean it sucks because a lot of these formats had been fostering new stars and putting interesting songs at #1 lately, but you're never gonna see Miguel top the R&B chart or Eric Church top the country chart again after this

"In the age of hip-hop, female pop stars are facing an identity crisis.

In July, R&B/hip-hop surpassed rock for the first time to officially become the biggest music genre in America, according to Nielsen Music, which tracks online streams and digital and physical albums. As of Oct. 12, R&B/hip-hop has driven 24% of music consumption in 2017—more than rock’s 21% and double pop’s 12% share."

i mean i understand your point but pop as it is currently staked our in the us is very white (with some latinx tinges). there was no rap or r&b artist on the lineup for the jingle ball i went to sunday in boston and the only mcs on the nationwide bill were logic and g eazy

The list finds space for Amber Coffman, Blondie and Aimee Mann who are not topping the charts these days, but doesn't find room for retro focused or similarly artisinal African-American artists, or African-American artists who are in the charts redefining pop

I get that they're defining "pop" as music that is sung and includes melodic hooks, it's just interesting who in 2017 both on and off the charts gets to be included in that definition and who does not.

i did see that piece and i agree with a lot of it. pop radio this year was mostly boring - the combined influence of those big songwriting camps and the ever-more-concentrated creation of radio playlists has been deathly

and yeah the term "adult album alternative" (where any putative mann singles would line up) does a lot of heavy lifting as far as positioning

Ms. Jody btw appeals largely to over 50 poc who like to line dance and are at the top end of the adult r’n’b listening bracket even if some of their synth and entendre filled southern soul faves don’t get played on such outlets.

jack antonoff produced three albums, only one of which (Taylor Swift) came close to getting play on mainstream pop and particularly pop radio -- and even it isn't doing so phenomenally -- and a handful of songs in 2017. that's it. that's all. compare to someone like my nemesis Benny Blanco, who genuinely is unescapble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Blanco_production_discography

Beginning in 2018, plays occurring on paid subscription-based services (such as Amazon Music and Apple Music) or on the paid subscription tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported platforms (such as SoundCloud and Spotify) will be given more weight in chart calculations than those plays on pure ad-supported services (such as YouTube) or on the non-paid tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported services.

On this week’s Popcast, Mr. Caramanica discusses the text and subtext of the Billboard Hot 100, and how the rule changes might punish certain audiences and genres, with Joe Coscarelli, pop music reporter for The New York Times, and David Turner, senior staff writer at Track Record.

Beginning in 2018, plays occurring on paid subscription-based services (such as Amazon Music and Apple Music) or on the paid subscription tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported platforms (such as SoundCloud and Spotify) will be given more weight in chart calculations than those plays on pure ad-supported services (such as YouTube) or on the non-paid tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported services.

They should just publish separate charts. "Here are the most-streamed songs. Here are the most-streamed songs from people with paid memberships to streaming services. Here are the physical CDs and downloads that sold the most copies this week - and by the way, we're including catalog titles alongside new releases now, so yeah, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Metallica's Black Album are the most popular records in America, again."

"this change will not helpful to most black musicians" has been the common intuitive interpretation, and that was certainly my own gut feeling, but in light of a few findings published here-n-there i actually don't think it's likely to be correct.

Mind you, there’s not even evidence that overindexing paid streaming would hurt hip-hop: A source at Spotify told me rap dominates the paid side of the service, too, even more strongly than the ad-supported side. I will wait to comment in full for when the new rules take effect, but in the meantime we might want to decide if we are rooting for or against our new robot overlords.

so paid-tier streaming users are even more likely to be consumers of 'urban' music + their combined streaming activity far outweighs that of those who only do 'free'/ad-supported streaming... if anything it seems such a rule change would give a boost to rap music (with the exception of the sort that gets most of its streams on youtube, i.e. dancing memes and such).

it's odd that billboard announced that impending rule change so far in advance. i figured they would implement it early in the year, but so far nothing else has been said about it.

oh and chris molanphy's comment was specifically about spotify, but it's safe to say it's fairly generalizable: the charts for apple music, which is subscription-only, are even more heavily skewed toward the urban side of things than spotify's charts are.

On a different subject-- the Grammys and rap --seems like its a catch 22 situation right now-- The voting membership and the academy head seem little interested in rap (and r'n'b). Even though many in the rap and r'n'b worlds (engineers, producers, artists ) could qualify to join the academy and could then vote, they probably don't consider it or want to, due to the way the genres get treated.